Why You Should Journal This New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Eve marks the finish line of this year and the new beginnings we all so greatly desire. A new year is the starting line of new hopes and dreams — all things are possible. It’s a way we can renew ourselves with a marked start date. Each year, we decide on dreams and goals we’d like to pursue over the next 365 days.
But the ritual of starting something new doesn’t have to wait. There doesn’t have to be a future date, a Monday or a new month to begin working on your future greatness. But for some reason, it feels more significant or serious if we have a date to start and a date of when our work should be completed. Though we can start today writing down ambitions and planning to accomplish them, it seems in our nature to need more significance. Since that may be the case for you, let’s look at the new year, 2023.
Journaling is a great way to help you navigate the next year through planning, focusing, tracking your stats, and being able to reflect and measure your successes. Growing confidence in knowing how you’re going to prepare and execute your week sets you up for consistency. Journaling can help you appreciate what’s working and what needs to be adjusted in an easily reviewable form. Journaling is meant to be the road map for your lifestyle plan that helps you to create turn-by-turn directions for the known and navigate the surprises and events that come up in life; it’s essentially your life goal GPS with the ability to reroute when a traffic jam pops up.
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How to successfully take a goal and create a plan in your journal is important. Your goals should be SMART — specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based.
Goals aren’t just about what you want to accomplish, but they speak to who you want to become. Your goals are your future self. This is vital because your goals need to be in line with your values, what’s important to you and how you want to live your overall lifestyle.
Everything worth doing needs a plan. You wouldn’t buy a house, move states, start an education program, enter a career field or make any other major life change without thinking about the movements necessary to get from point A to B. The same is necessary for creating a lifestyle plan that will help you reach the goals you’ve set for yourself. These goals can include looking at weight loss, gaining lean muscle mass, running a race, cleansing your gut or creating healthy habits around nutrition and sleep. You may even want to build a new business, add a side hustle passion project or spend more quality time with your tribe. Whatever your goal, it all needs some organizing.
Journaling sets you up for success every morning, and you can review your accomplishments every evening. Start your day with who you are today: the entrepreneur, the healthy person or the mindful partner. Journal about who that person is and how their life looks. This will help you embody that person and become your desired goal.
Journaling is meant to work for you, your lifestyle and your goals. How is your mindset? Are you excited about your plans and your journey? Do you have frustrations you need to vent or old emotional strongholds that don’t serve you? Journaling gives you a safe space to release, grow and determine your own path going forward. You are the only you, and you are capable of all your dreams and aspirations.
I’m here to support you with resources and encouragement to get you to your next level. I found success in journaling, and I hope you find success with it as well. Have the most amazing new year; I am so excited for you!
About the Author
Coach Kati Epps is the founder of MyBody GX with a background in chemistry from Colorado State University, an ACE-certified personal trainer, a health coach and a nutrition specialist.
